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Diverse crowd celebrates Shaffer Chapel renovation

Thomas St. Myer
10:33 a.m. EDT August 25, 2014

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Over one hundred people line up for a photo in front of the Shaffer Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Sunday following a renovation ceremony. Roughly 300 people attended the ceremony for the building that was founded in 1893.(Photo: Corey Ohlenkamp/The Star Press)Buy Photo

MUNCIE – Shaffer Chapel Pastor Chris Randolph said some poignant words shortly after he stepped up to the microphone Sunday afternoon for the renovation celebration.

In reference to the racial divide triggered by a white police officer shooting an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., earlier this month, Randolph scanned the crowd and advised everyone to look around the sanctuary.

Randolph then said, "If they want a solution to a problem, all they have to do is come to Muncie, Indiana, and come down here to Shaffer Chapel, and they'll see diversity working in the community: black people, white people, Mexican, Asian. We want everybody to work and we work in God's house."

A diverse and sharply dressed crowd of about 300 packed the small, hot Whitely church. The pews were all filled, leaving some sitting on folding chairs and other standing against the back wall as the community celebrated the completion of the first phase of renovation of the historic landmark church.

A diverse crowd numbered in the hundreds packs Shaffer Chapel to celebrate renovation to the historic landmark in Whitely:
By Thomas St. Myer/The Star Press

Founded in 1893, Shaffer Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church is the site where former pastor and mortician J.E. Johnson embalmed the bodies of two black men lynched in Marion in 1930 in the last documented lynching in the northern United States.

The lynching occurred after the two men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, were arrested for allegedly raping a white resident. Johnson volunteered to embalm the bodies.

Ku Klux Klan members descended on Whitely in search of Johnson and the two dead bodies, but black residents held an all-night vigil at Shaffer and the Klan eventually left the site without harming Johnson.

One of the women in attendance Sunday, Judy Mays, said her grandfather, Anderson Blair, and great uncle, Isaac Wingfield, traveled with Johnson to Marion to pick up the bodies.

"It was such an important part of our community and our legacy," Mays said.

Blight took hold of the historic landmark by the 2000s.

Holes in the stained glass windows, crumbling concrete steps blocked off by yellow caution tape, and a sign with chipped white paint on the borders greeted entrants to the church.

That prompted the Whitely Community Council, particularly its president Cornelius Dollison and his wife, Mary, to take action.

The Dollisons requested donations toward repairs to the church for their 50th anniversary present. The couple married in Shaffer Chapel on Sept. 2, 1962. The donations totaled about $5,000, and from there, the Whitely council reached out to virtually everyone in the community to raise its targeted goal of $60,000.

"We didn't think there was this much to it," said Cornelius, who arrived toward the end of the celebration after ministering at New Castle Correctional Facility. "We just wanted to do some things to make it better."

Cornelius smiled as he scanned the renovated church.

The completed phase one reconstruction consisted of new steps to the front, a handicapped accessible railing on the east side that leads to a newly installed door, new carpeting, leveling out the landscaping and moving the historic landmark sign in prominent view in front of the church.

"I've lived here for 30 years and this is my first time seeing a unified effort at this level," Whitely council board member Frank Scott said.

The second phase of the project includes an eastside parking lot, new windows inside the sanctuary, a handicapped-accessible restroom, applying for national historic landmark status and a museum to commemorate the historic significance of the church.

Ball State University students under the guidance of professor Eva Zygmunt contributed significantly to phase one. They will be just as active in phase two with putting a museum in the fellowship hall.

Zygmunt said she and the students feel privileged to contribute to the renovation of Shaffer Chapel. She and a contingent of Ball State graduates and students attended the festivities Sunday.

"For the students to come back and see this is hugely significant," Zygmunt said.

Zygmunt, the Dollisons, politicians and pastors all spoke during the 45-minute long program. Their words incited claps, cheers and smiles from a lively crowd.

Three individuals stood up near the end of the celebration and offered monetary or materialistic donations to assist in phase two of reconstruction.

Samuel Sumner, presiding elder of the South District of African Methodist Episcopal Church, said he served as a pastor in a racially-divided Muncie from 1987-92. The sight of a diverse crowd united for the sake of the Whitely church left him in awe.

"I was here 20 years ago," Sumner said to the crowd, "and I haven't seen this type of diversity in Muncie."

Contact reporter Thomas St. Myer at (765) 213-5829. Follow him on Twitter @tstmyer.